He awoke to darkness. Though perhaps 'awoke' was not quite an accurate term, as he was more in that in-between phase between waking and sleeping. Mumbled words came to his newly-developed ears, words that he couldn't quite make out. It didn't matter anyway, as he was soon sucked down to sleep.
\\\
The first time Matthew Michael Murdock realized that his body didn't feel quite right he was two. He would reach for a colored block and fall short of it, despite the fact that he remembered his arms to be at least twice as long. He would look in the mirror in the bathroom and see-
{-wavy, messy locks the color of ink and eyes as green as the Av-}
-plain, dark brown hair and slightly warmer eyes. His father-
{-dead on the floor, a blank expression on his face and take Harry and run-}
-cuddling him close to his chest and look here, Matty, you're going to look like me one day. Sometimes he would lie awake and see flashes of emerald and ruby and scarlet behind his eyes, and other nights he would fall asleep only to dream of things he should not know.
{A castle in the Scottish highlands. An eagle with the legs of a horse. A tabby and an owl and ginger and curls and home, home, home-}
Matthew knew a lot. He knew the pain of loosing a loved one, and the sorrow in his father's eyes. He knew the annoyance of having a child scream his lungs out and kept his trap shut till morning.
He was aware that he should have a mother, that there should be someone standing beside his father, keeping him tall. He knew that sometimes adults and people leave for no reason other than that they were irresponsible or unkind or selfish.
{Sometimes people cheat, and while Matthew only suspected his mother of it, he hated that he knew he couldn't take away his father's pain-}
Still, at least Matthew had one parent, and he knew from the part of him that was big and scarred that to have one was a novel idea. He would have preferred a mother too, one-
{-with vermillion red hair, eyes as bright as emeralds-}
-that stuck by his father, but he knew he couldn't have everything. He was happy, and healthy, and he was never stuffed under a cupboard or went hungry. He was safe.
And that too was quite the novel idea.
\\\
Everyone who met him knew that Matthew was quite the strange child.
He never screamed or cried as a baby, and while, as a new single parent his father Jack was heavily relieved, there was a time he feared his baby was a mute. However, he figured it didn't matter much, as it seemed Matt simply woke up one day with the ability to speak in full, concise sentences. The boy didn't play much either, and only green blocks and black-furred dog plushies held his attention for very long. When given the choice to run around with children his age he instead stuck to his father's side, the fingers of one hand gripping tightly onto Jack's pants.
And the boy was so still! He could sit for literal hours in church or in the car, and he didn't fidget when Jack held him. Though he was slightly uncoordinated, he ate his food as cleanly and politely as he could, and his sticky fingers refrained from being rubbed all over his clothes and getting himself dirty. His fingers did twitch and drum on his legs, but it was more in the way of adults and less because he was full of unrestrained energy. His quickly developed speech and reasonable tone of voice only led credibility to the joking theory of his friends and neighbors that Matt was actually an adult in the body of a child.
(It wasn't entirely a joke.)
In fact, possibly the only entirely childish thing about little Matt was the boy's possessiveness. Matthew didn't like sharing Jack himself, his toys, or his food with anyone. And that was putting it mildly. Whenever Jack would hold one of the orphans so that the nun in charge of him or her could do something Matt would glare at the baby in his arms. At school he would rather no-one use his stuff than have another child borrow it. He never hurt the children, oh no; but he always made it quite clear that everything that was his was only his.
It was also very clear that Matt admired his father more than anyone else in the world. Even from an early age it was obvious to Jack that Matt wanted to be just like him-and that scared Jack. He didn't want his little boy to turn out like him, growing up to be a boxer that took bribes to hit the floor. He wanted Matt to be more, far more. He wanted him to be known for something that wasn't getting hit in the face thousands of times.
And so, Jack encouraged Matt in his studies. Jack knew Matt was smart, he knew it, and he wanted his boy to know it too. He made sure Matt put school first, made sure that he understood that even socializing was less important.
His little boy thrived. Mathematics, English, History; it didn't matter what subject it was, Matt was brilliant. Like his speech, he learned to read and write before the other kids knew they were learning to read and write, and his times tables were memorized within mere hours. He once again mourned his awful job and the dreadful pay he brought in, because Matt was clearly a genius, and he wished more than ever that he could afford a private school, or even just a tutor. It was incredible how much his brain just soaked up, but Jack knew his boy had to be bored out of his mind at school, and he had no way to fix it. Genius or not, the public schools in Hell's Kitchen were not about to move Matt up a grade without extra cash; cash which he had no way of acquiring.
And so, without any way of making it better for Matt, life continued on, and in the blink of an eye first, second, and third grade passed until that fateful day when Matt was nine years old.
\\\
Pain. It was all Harry-as-Matthew could process. His eyes were burning up, feeling like they were melting from their very sockets. In all his years he could not remember a pain so overwhelming, so absolute.
And terror. Matt might have needed to wear glasses before, but he'd always had eyesight, albeit blurry, and the idea that he might not anymore was enough to freak him out of his mind. The doctors and nurses were careful not to say anything about it within his earshot, but he was well aware what happened when someone had acid poured in their eyes, what it meant when a blindfold was wrapped around them. Plus, he had always had fairly acute hearing, and the lack of eyesight only seemed to improve his hearing.
As if from far away he heard his father's voice, and Matt realized huge tears were dampening the blindfold. In that moment, he didn't care that he had seventeen-years' worth of memories shoved in with his brain, he didn't care that a part of him was broken and sad and resigned. He just wanted to rewind a day, to go home with his dad and rework on the homework he'd finished months ago. He wanted to lie there forever and never have to face the world again.
But Murdocks always get back up, Matty-
{-something worth fighting for-}
-and so Matt pushed himself forward, wanting his father to be proud of him.
He learned Braille.
And if sometimes he felt ink through his fingertips, if he sometimes distinguished which book was which by sense of smell, if sometimes he could taste parchment on his tongue-
Well. It was only because his sight was gone and the rest of the senses knew they had to pick up the slack.
His father bought him a three foot-long cane, and he learned to walk around with it.
(The nearly-completed picture of the room in his mind was his imagination. The loud thuds of the cane that rang through his mind were exaggerated.)
One night Matt expressed his disappointment to his father, in that now that he was blind he could no longer become a boxer like Jack had. In response, Jack brought Matt's hands to his face, running his son's fingers over the scars displayed there.
The only thing I want you to be hitting is books, Matty, he'd said.
Matt never brought it up again.
He didn't have the chance to. That week his father was shot because he refused to take a fall, and Matthew was shipped off to the church orphanage, angry and bitter.
\\\
The sensory input only worsened. What he used to be able to pass off as his imagination and exaggerated complaining now pounded through his head and brain like a jackhammer. He began to taste food from miles away, the smells of the sewer and exhaust assaulted his nose. The barks from the rabid dog in the abandoned construction sight kept him up all night, and the rough fabric of the cotton bedsheets made his skin feel like it was slowly being scraped off.
At least it kept the memory flashes and-
{-nightmares of dragons of fire, blood on his fingers, and kill the spare-}
-dreams at bay. Silver lining and all that.
The morning that his tumultuous life began once again to change he found himself unable to leave his room. He knew he was scaring the nuns, but he couldn't help it. The noises, the scents, the touch of everything-it was overwhelming. And the knowledge that his father was no longer able to help him, that he had died because of his stupid pride and left him all alone-
It only made the flame of hatred and anger in his chest burn hotter.
So there he was, pitifully shoved into the corner of the room farthest from the door, hands braced over his ears, cotton sweatshirt tossed several feet away, when the door opened and someone stepped in. Matt could taste the strawberries the man had had for breakfast and smell the blood on the knife hidden under his leather jacket, and if he wasn't in so much pain he'd have wondered who the man was.
But, as it was, he was in far too much agony to care.
The man stopped advancing a couple feet from Matt. "So you're the Murdock boy, huh? The nuns say your condition is getting worse. But it isn't is it?"
Somehow Matt knew exactly when the object left his hand. What was more, he knew that it was a set of aged, metal keys, and about to hit his face. Without thinking about it, he raised his hand and caught it, his mind going momentarily, blissfully silent.
"No. It's getting better."
\\\
The boy who was once Harry Potter wasn't sure what to make of Stick.
On one hand, he was a jerk. When Matt opened up to him he was mocked for his emotions, for thinking that Stick would care about whatever it was Matt told him. He regularly beat training lessons into Matt until he was lying on the floor; bruised, bloody, and exhausted, and then would kick him while he was down. Probably his favorite slurs were ones about Jack Murdock, as Stick had quickly learned that it was the easiest way to enrage Matt.
Any normal child would hate, if not utterly despise Stick.
But Matt was far from normal.
He remembered how in the early days of their acquaintance, when they were still getting to know one another, how Stick had bought him an ice cream cone. No-one had done that for him since his father, and even then they had been few and far between. Both lives Matt had been raised in an environment where the adults around him did not spend much coin on him; even if Jack had only done so due to the lack of reliable income. For both Matt and Harry treats were a novelty, and yet Stick had given Matthew an ice cream-even though Matt was well aware it was probably simply to get his trust.
Matt saved the wrapping.
{People liked to use him, manipulate him, it wasn't anything new.
They had just never given him anything before.}
He was also smart enough to know that he needed help. Not only because of his sight and senses, but due to the burning ball of hate and anger seething just beneath his skin. He needed it to go somewhere, else he knew it would simply build and build until he thoughtlessly hurt someone around him.
Stick was giving him that outlet, was teaching him to use his pain to push himself back onto his feet. What was once sleepless nights filled with ugly memories soon became exhausted, dreamless sleep with the ball of rage dimmed to embers and replaced with tiredness.
{Matt knew it wasn't healthy, but he didn't have his friends to rant to anymore. He didn't have the ones with bushy brown and messy ginger hair. He didn't have the godfather and the werewolf and the girl with silky, vermillion hair.}
{This would have to do.}
On nights when Stick had gone a little too far and pain kept him awake he twisted the ice cream wrapper into a bracelet. It wasn't very big and he used tape to keep the torn edges together, but it had been a gift that Matt hadn't earned. It had been a line cast into the sea, a helping hand, a reminder that there was someone out there who cared about him-
And that made it more important to him than all the treasures in the world.
